I haven't played Hollow Ataraxia, but it's kind of yet another continuity, if Battle Moon Wars (which takes HF as canon) is anything to go by.

Also: no matter how many times I see it, Illya's death in UBW at the hands of Gilgamesh is always traumatic.. Caster torturing Saber isn't easy to watch, either. Everything past Saber's route has some pretty painful Player Punches.

I just wanna see Rin get embarassed by Zelretch's Kaleidostick. Honestly, the two Counter-Guardian TOHSAKA fanfics I've read had that Kaleidostick as part of Caster's Noble Phantasms, and it's really funny.

Well, no one likes having their heart ripped out, and Caster torturing Saber has spawned a lot of doujinshi. Believe me when I say that.

BTW, I'd like to note that I haven't actually gone anywhere in the Visual Novel; my knowledge of each route comes from This Wiki. I stopped playing Fate 'cause of CLANNAD, and with SHUFFLE! and Kanon on my hands, it'll have to wait.

Oh, ok, in that case I'll be a bit careful with what I spoil. Caster's abuse of Saber isn't actually terribly graphic (it's all with magic, anway), but it goes into a quite a bit of psychological detail on Caster's part; it's just that she's enjoying this a tad too much.

As far as the anime depiction goes, you never see this, so Caster comes across as being a bit more sympathetic. I mean, she sorta still is in the VN, but it never lets you forget that she's capable of some pretty fucking horrible things.

I read all spoilers anyway, so it doesn't really matter. If anything, it'll help me in clearing the game much faster.

Caster does have a Freudian Excuse though... And I'm saddened that the two Counter-Guardian Tohsaka fanfic writers haven't been updating recently. Rin is one of my, if not the, favorite characters in Fate. There's something about her that really appeals to me, I dunno what though.

Rin isn't actually that conventional a Tsundere. She pretty much epitomises courage under fire, considering that she actually doesn't have an easy time of it. Unlike Shirou, she has the pressure of having to maintain the Masquerade, and she has to live up to her bloodline. That this doesn't break her in the slightest, and that she's still capable of being willing to lay her life down for her estranged baby sister is worthy of admiration.

And everything that you mentioned is the backbone of the two Counter-Guardian Tohsaka fics I've been reading. They both start from a UBW Bad End, where Gilgamesh wins.

Maybe that's why most of the fandom don't like Sakura. Aside from the fact that she, uh, eats most of the cast, there's also the issue with Rin. And IIRC, I read somewhere that one HF Bad End had her set the Crest Worms on Rin. She broke after a day.

She pretty much epitomises courage under fire, considering that she actually doesn't have an easy time of it.

Well, arguably that's a part of most Tsundere-type characters. Rin is awesome, don't get me wrong, but she's a pretty typical tsundere. (although not just that)

To be honest, the fact that Sakura Eats half the cast is what made me like her. I have an unreasonable fondness for that kind of thing I guess. Also, there's a much more immature reason, but I won't bring down the level of discussion.

"No, the Singularity will not happen. Computation is hard." -Happy Ent

I know. I know. I'm the one who started the Fate/ Silence Broken RPG on this Fora so there's no way I can say this without sounding hypocritical, but:

Frankly, I never liked Fate/stay night. It was far too wrapped up in Shirou's 'hero of justice' concept and metaphysical babble to even have fun with its cool scenario. I mean, summoning ancient heroes from different mythologies to fight each other, that'd make for a rather interesting plot. Not so when everyone's a total stereotype and there's only four characters (Archer, Lancer, Kirei and Sasaki) actually worth caring about, and Kirei's only ever interesting and developed in only one route.

Another irritating thing was that the Masquerade was never truly broken. Fsn's plot would've improved a lot if it did that, but nope, never happens. On a related note how come none of the important characters are truly normal? The only normal character of any real importance had years of training as an assassin. Just once would I like for Issei or Ayako to come along and say "Hey, Shirou/ Rin, I was wondering if... Holy Crap! What's going on here?! Who are those people?!" and not for them to not forget about it and try to actually do something about the Grail War. Or maybe Taiga finds out what Saber really is in UBW and then fights Kuzuki or something. Even within mages it seems everyone has to have some 'special power', Shirou and Bazette being the biggest examples. For once I'd like Nasu to write a story where the protagonist is truly just an ordinary human.

Fate/stay night wasn't terrible, there were a few really good moments, however you had to slog through a lot of really boring stretches to get to anything actually good. It really does feel like it was written by a high-schooler. Oh wait...

Actually just look up this review, it'll summarise the majority of the problems I had.

Fate/Zero from what I've read is a slight improvement (although it managed to have an even worse protagonist, because Well-Intentioned ExtremistAnti-Hero = arrogant arsehole in the Nasu Verse apparently). The question of what everyone desires from the Grail was pronounced a lot more here, making this feel like an actual War than just a series of villains that have to be fought, and Saber is much more likable and sympathetic than in Fsn. I was fairly disappointed that there weren't more female Servants or any female Masters, but that's overlookable.

I'm quite grateful Fate/strange fake is actually going to be made, not only does it look fun, it also looks really inventive and original as well. But at the end of the day I think it's disappointing that the better entries in this franchise were the ones not written by Nasu.

Heaven's Feel delves a lot into the backstory of the Fuyuki Grail War and actually turns Kotomine from a boring, generic Card-Carrying Villain into a fully three-dimensional and surprisingly sympathetic character.

Apart from that though, the route's not that great. True, Rider gets a lot of development here, but I thought that just turned her into a Sympathetic Sue.

I've never understood this whole "I dislike Sakura so I don't wanna play Sakura's route" thing. It's not "Sakura's route" it's the Heaven's Feel route, and Sakura just happens to be Shirou's love interest in that one. Shirou's still the main character, and Rin's still the female lead (yes, she's the female lead in all the routes), and fundamentally the story is still about them just as much as it is in the other routes.

As for the oddness of the story (there's the Holy Grail but no one really seems to care about it as much as you'd think), I always figured that was there to emphasize the strange mindsets of mages and heroes. They don't think like normal people, because they're not. Heroes are larger than life, while mages care more about pride or knowledge than anything else. Heck, even the grail itself (pre-corruption) was merely a byproduct of a search for a "greater" goal. To me, this is actually pretty similar to Tsukihime, particularly the portrayal of the vampires. It's no coincidence that the majority of them used to be mages.

As for Shirou, I can sort of see why you might want a normal protagonist and less railroading, but I kind of liked the idea of being inside the head of this half-crazy guy who's constantly rationalizing things to himself (much like how I liked Tsukihime's idea of being inside the head of someone subject to irrepressible violent impulses). Being able to go completely out of character would undermine a lot of who Shirou is, which you have to admit is a decent chunk of the story, for better or worse. Fate/Stay Night without Shirou would be completely unrecognizable, and while some may consider that a good thing, it wouldn't be the story they were aiming for. And, it seems to me, it would be further removed from the Tsukihime style of storytelling.

Edit: HF's true ending felt like Earn Your Happy Ending to me, but I can see how it would considered a cop out.

Exactly. Which is why my usual method of playing Visual Novels is to grab a flowchart or a walkthrough and stop having to break the flow of the story with Dead Ends. Which is also why Kagetsu Tohya ended up being so annoying for me. "What? Don't tell me I have to play through that whole day again." Let's just say thank all that is holy for "Skip read scenes".

I also don't like the game for the sheer amount of Rail Roading it put you through. There's only three routes, which must all be played in order, and if you even go Off The Rails just a tiny bit it hits you with Rocks Fall Everyone Dies.

Actually, I kind of preferred this over Tsukihime's branching, where you could be several scenes ahead before you realise you've screwed up. It's easier to make the choices when there is no doubt whose route you're on. The further back you have to backtrack, the more convoluted it becomes because of the increased number of slight-yet-signficant deviations.

Shirou's still the main character, and Rin's still the female lead (yes, she's the female lead in all the routes), and fundamentally the story is still about them just as much as it is in the other routes.

I don't know if I agree with this. Well, not for Fate anyway, where I really do think it's more about Saber/Arturia.

Comparing the anime to the VN, it sometimes misleads you in terms of what to expect in the VN routes. All of Saber's important Stay Night events are more or less faithfully reproduced, but Archer's famous battle vs Berserker in the anime seems to make a lot of people think that you'll get more of the same in UBW. He does have a few moments, to be sure, but...correct me if I'm wrong, but Archer himself never actually does the full UBW attack. He invokes the Reality Marble with the spell, but it's Shirou who launches the Field of Blades against Gilgamesh.

Well, maybe that's in the supplementary material, but even if it was, you wouldn't be able to tell that from UBW. Archer didn't use his UBW aggressively because at the point where he invokes his Noble Phantasm, he had a different agenda. He doesn't use it against Shirou in their appointed handbags-at-dawn because he's Masterless then, presumably, and UBW burns mana like it was going out of fashion.

In UBW? I don't quite recall how that route climaxed, all I know is that we have one ending being Rin's harem ending and the other with Shirou going to London with Rin to study at the Magus Association.

Archer isn't dead. He needs his mana to pull off a Big Damn Heroes moment to save Rin and Shirou by blasting the hell out of the Grail Vessel to give Saber an opportunity to Excalibur it, and one final projection that finishes off Gilgamesh who's trying to take Shirou with him.

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